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EQT Corp. (NYSE:EQT) CEO Toby Rice said Thursday he is optimistic about permitting reform that will make it easier to build major new pipelines and other infrastructure, because the U.S. government, the oil and gas sector and the renewables industry are becoming increasingly aligned on the issue.
“Permitting reform is inevitable in this country,” Rice said at the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston.
Rice said earlier this week at CERAWeek that he sees the U.S. natural gas market coming back into balance in the middle of this year as production adjusts following the recent collapse in prices.
U.S. gas futures have been cut in half during the past three months, which has caused a pullback in drilling rig deployment, particularly in the Haynesville shale basin in Louisiana and east Texas.
“Weather did not show up this year,” which has created a surplus of ~500B cf of gas, Rice said, according to Bloomberg, “but as a result of these lower prices, we do think that activity levels will adjust accordingly.”
EQT Corp. (EQT) is “very unlikely to make a material operational change based upon the weather forecast at the current time,” Long Player writes in an analysis newly posted on Seeking Alpha.